Ric

Marbles were not made with precision, as Alan said, but they were made for a purpose - to play marbles, which means that being round and rolling smoothly was a key to success. Just think of Akro's quip "Shoot as straight as a crow flies" - it was important for marketing purposes. For the kids who bought them, out-of-rounds, cold-rolls, etc. would be deal breakers. If they consistently found "bad marbles" in one company's offerings they would surely look elsewhere. Of course, some of these less than stellar shooting marbles did make it through quality control and into the hands of players, who probably used them for sling shot ammo or some other purpose, there were certainly marble games that didn't require "good shooting marbles". If you have wound up with a big lot of marbles that all have issues in this regard, I would think you got into a bunch of seconds, or rejects, perhaps even dug marbles. While there were plenty of perfectly good playing marbles discarded by companies for various reasons, any marbles that wouldn't pass the basic requirement of round and smooth were surely discarded. Of course, the other possibility is that some of what you are feeling is just damage caused long after the marbles sold.

Interestingly, certain of those fantasy bags may be collectible in their own right - some of them were filled decades ago! @Al Oregon probably knows more about them than anyone else I know. Maybe he'll chime in with some thoughts.

That last group of marbles you show look like they may have come out of a Champion Bicentennial bag. They put marbles from nearly every WV company in those. And those patches were not made by Champion, AFAIK. Ain't marbles fun!?

It's a simple 7/8" as hand-mades go, but the colors, the transparent ribbons and the condition caught my eye - I just couldn't leave it behind. I never thought it would happen, but I have fallen pretty hard for the old Germans . . .

Jumpin' jimminy man, that's a nice marble!

Love those fat vanes and the structure is really cool too!

I'm with later All Reds too.

It's kind of a wild one, Tommy. It would have sorted as No. 5. I'm with Art on the ID and oxblood.

I'm think Vitro too, but I can see why you had a Pelt feeling . . .

Oh, and those Alox Air Force bags are fantasies. Alox did not package them and they probably do not have Alox marbles in them.

This is kind of a tough one, at least for me, does it glow under UV?

I think it's a big funky Vitro Conqueror.

Alley Agate to me.

@bumblebee Sorry about that, Jason . . . it was all Art's fault! 😇 @akroorka 😛 Here's a recent 7/8" score . . .

Nice Alleys! @VaMarbles @Tommy Nice pattern - reminds me a little of this one . . .

My favorite white-based Alley . . .

Champion . . .

Many of them look Heaton to me, Tommy.

These pink Anacortes were posted by a long-gone member (Don Miller) about 15 years ago. The pic's not the best but there is yellow in there. IMO, If your marble is not Vitro, it's probably foreign, and I don't think it's foreign.

Frankly, I think the term "diaper fold" has limited utility. My only point is that not all marbles have two cut lines.

Not to be nit-picky here, Art, but while all wholly machine-made marbles might have two cut-lines, transitional (hand-gathered/machine rounded) types usually only have one - like these favorites of mine. As for "diaper folds", I think of them as a particular type of single-seam transitional where there is looping around the edges of the seam: I guess you're supposed to imagine a baby's legs sticking out of there - never made a lot of sense to me. 😄

For comparison, here is a nice K&M that Bumblebee posted from one of Marblealan's auctions . . .

I think I see AV . . . is that a Green Fizz?

More patches . . . a few Acme Realers.

Your pics look okay to me. The green on black is nice. Is the base opaque, or more like a Bruiser?